Toei Animation has started implementing new measures to improve the hellish working schedules of anime staff, but as it turns out, their half-hearted implementation has actually hurt employees more than it’s helped them. Let this serve as a bitter reminder that the problems with this industry should be addressed at their source.

Our coverage of Toei Animation’s activities is often at odds with the way they’re perceived by the anime community at large. While they’ve earned the hatred of many fans with their undeniable poor management of iconic titles and also due to widespread misunderstandings about how anime works, we tend to focus on the positives; we’ve covered their role in raising exceptional creators throughoutthe ages, their new youngstars, and their notoriously above average working conditions just to name a few cheerful topics. And it’s precisely that last point we have to talk about today, but not quite in a positive way – a decision they’ve recently started enforcing has been causing trouble for their staff, and it serves as a good example as to why half-hearted moves to improve anime’s hellish working schedules can actually backfire.

For those unaware, Toei Animation has boasted of uniquely positive traits for their staff for a long time, in particular their labor union. Does that mean they’re a particularly progressive workplace, genuinely concerned about their staff? Not quite. Toei Animation’s fight for a union would have never been successful had they not been attached to their massive parent company Toei Company, which doesn’t operate under the very questionable customs of the anime industry. Tied to a corporation that massive, their problems are far too big to be casually swept under the rug as most studios do, so Toei is essentially forced to pay more attention to all these matters. Now that doesn’t make the positive results that come out of it any less valuable, but understanding that decisions aren’t taken out of pure good faith is enlightening when you’re faced with puzzling moves like the one they recently took.

Truth to be told, the studio is in an enviable position in many regards at the moment. They recently inaugurated fancy new installations that right about everyone loves, and their output has lowered as a consequence of the move to the point that everyone’s workload is much more manageable than in recent hectic times. And yet, there are more Toei Animation staff members complaining than ever at the moment, both publicly and through more private channels which we’d rather not bring attention to so as not to put their employees in a dangerous position. The reason? As decided by their executives, Toei is enforcing an overarching plan to achieve more reasonable working schedules, starting by making overtime work less viable and especially by forcing holidays on their staff. What in theory sounds like a nice idea, more so considering anime’s usually outrageous working schedule, quickly falls apart when you realize there was nothing more to their plan. No change whatsoever in the way they operate, no addressing the core issues that make their staff work for so many hours to begin, simply a mandate to send them home. With this move, Toei Animation is forcefully pushing a band-aid within a gaping wound, and their employees are rightfully upset about it.

Put into practice, Toei’s decision simply means that their staff now have less time to do all the same tasks than they did before, which as you can imagine makes the tension in the workplace rise quite a bit. By not tackling the root of the problem and crudely trying to patch one of its nasty effects, they’re actually making the time they spend at the company more stressful than it was before. Allowing overworked employees to enjoy a holiday for a change is undoubtedly positive, but many staff with active productions are complaining that measures meant to help them are only making their job more difficult. That only gets worse when you consider that some production managers have gone as far as explicitly banning the staff from taking animation materials home to do work on their own, which means that the reduced time at the company is really all they’ve got. Though the first major implementation of these new policies has so far mostly been limited to this past Golden Week holidays, it’s not a rash decision, but rather the first steps in the studio’s premeditated plans. And so far, the reaction has been very negative.

While the studio’s goals are by all mean positive, their implementation has been disastrous.

Since they’re not that foolish though, Toei’s executives did account for something along these lines happening. Their answer? Telling the staff that they shouldn’t concern themselves with quality dips on their work and to prioritize their rest. While there’s obvious truth to that, in the end that also came across as insulting, somehow upsetting their employees more in their attempt to calm them down. There are various reasons why that simply doesn’t cut it; for starters, purely professional ones, since creators don’t want their names to be attached to subpar work. But more importantly, there’s a sentimental factor to all of this. Everyone who sticks to anime production for a long time does so out of love for the medium, because otherwise it’s not really worth it. Telling someone like that to accept work they feel is undercooked because their boss wants them to spend a couple days home and expecting them to smile back is outrageous.

Toei Animation is a massive studio with lots of room for management improvements, so they’ve really got the potential to become one of the most reasonable workplaces in the messy anime industry. Their own reports acknowledge they should seek genuine improvements in their staff’s working life. But forcefully sending staff home while taking no other measures isn’t step towards that, it’s bad palliative care that is only annoying the patients. Hopefully they’ll listen, and the industry as a whole will pay some attention. Not like this.

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I understand and at the same time I don’t. Of course reducing your work hours will mean that your quality will drop, if that wasn’t the case there would be no reason other studios would have impossible hours to begin with. But at the same time, those impossible hours are literally killing people like you said in previous articles. I saw other articles of studios trying to enforce vacation on their staff only for them to continue working even if it meant without pay, so to me the strict enforcement of those new rules is better than if the producers… Read more »

Increasing the number of staff in a project (animation crew in particular) has been the default reaction of the industry for a long time, and it absolutely doesn’t work – efficiency drops like a rock when you have to coordinate massive teams spread among multiple companies, so eventually you’re not really helping at all. This is particularly true when it comes to animation directors, which was even mentioned in the ruthless industry criticism on Mahou Shoujo Ore #5 (which I still can’t believe the director got away with); it’s not a new point of criticism by any stretch, but if… Read more »

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9 months ago

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Carmichael

I see, thanks for the clarification.

So if I understand correctly, basically the main problem comes from the planning. But wouldn’t this limitation of worktime create an incentive for better planning? I may be wrong but it seems bad planning is common because people know that even if they screw up, the animators will work more to make it one way or another?

More than encourage them, if they keep it up in spite of the complaints it’ll force the staff to approach projects with these new rules in mind. The problem there is that there’s only so much they can do about a problem that wasn’t their fault to begin with – directors, animators, even production managers can’t really change planned broadcasts, the amount of resources that’s allocated, availability of specialized staff, etc. This is basically the corporation acknowledging a problem and pushing it downwards, which isn’t ideal when that’s exactly the people you should be helping. I do have a lot… Read more »

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9 months ago

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Carmichael

Yeah “encourage” was a bit of a euphemism^^ I agree with your view. However, I think that it was something needed anyway. Executives don’t die because of badly planned anime, so I think this was more something like treating the most severe symptom first. If I’m not mistaken, changing how anime is basically made would require years with their command catalog and already ongoing series, which is why I think they prefered to first ensure a healthier work environment by those most affected. It is not ideal, but to me it at least prevents the worst outcomes while they experiment… Read more »

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9 months ago

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kad

I mean, the more the animators, the less the number of frames each one of them have to draw in the same amount of time right? so I think they would have more time to polish each frame that it won’t even need any correction by the supervisors.. Doesn’t it work like that?

That’s more or less the idea, but it never works out well for multiple reasons: – When you get to the point of having to recruit a ton of animators, the concept of “more time” isn’t really a thing. It’s a desperation measure and when it happens, right about everyone’s work ends up unpolished. – Anime isn’t composed of individual pieces you can just glue together. If the artists changes every handful of cuts, especially if it’s among people who aren’t working together, there will be no sense of cohesion whatsoever and all scenes will fall apart. Obviously there’s room… Read more »

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9 months ago

Guest

Carmichael

Well, the first point is true as of now, but if they know from the get-go that they have less worktime per animator, then wouldn’t the planning be accordingly centered around more people instead of it being an emergency measure? It sure would require also more supervisors, but if it is done correctly those same supervisors wouldn’t have to deal with an impossible amount of corrections like they are now anyway?

It can be done and lead to a solid result – certain Sunrise productions (St8 works like Love Live but also the likes of Unicorn) were known for using a ridiculous number of animation directors to polish the hell out of everyone’s work, not because they ran out of time but as an intentional measure. The thing is though, no one really likes having bloated crews. It’s a nightmare for the management staff and also unfulfilling for the artists who handle tiny bits, not to mention more expensive to boot. There’s a reason that almost every exceptional & well planned… Read more »

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9 months ago

Guest

HosannaExcelsis

I guess the obvious follow-up question here is: if this measure is harming employees more than helping them, what are the measures Toei Animation should be doing instead? The only thing I can think of that would be obviously helpful in this regard is to abandon weekly TV entirely and move to irregularly released web or theatrical series, which would allow the schedule to expand as needed so that people can have rest without compromising the quality of their work. This would probably be a tough sell from a business standpoint, especially for a company built around a consistently churned… Read more »

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9 months ago

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osama___a

seems they actually try? to do more non standard TV shows, like the weird butt detective that have 1st 3 episodes showed in golden week holiday while the rest will be in July/Aug. and with pretty advanced time and small team.

but still they are tied with their main long weekly titles that noway they can drop it + their Bandai/TVtokyo titles

Some things they’ve already already doing and experimenting about are good examples. Diversification of their output (models and also production methods), and the much more efficient fully digital pipeline they’re testing won’t suddenly make everyone’s job easy, but if they stick to them they’re bound to have very positive effects. A lot of Toei’s problems stem from the fact that they’re a management madness, 10 times larger than regular studios and somehow 50x harder to coordinate. So this for example is a good initiative that their staff is actually excited about: https://area.autodesk.jp/case/movie_tv/toei-animation-shotgun/

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9 months ago

Guest

Jacque

“From now on, you all get vacations!”
“Yay!”
“And you won’t be allowed to bring your animation supplies home.”
“Uh……”

Yeah that sounds good in theory, but it’s no wonder they’re all pissed. Imagine being behind on a project and having no chance to catch up when not at work.

It boggles the mind that they went on to apply it immediately to ongoing projects, where the staff had already arranged their work with certain conditions in mind and now they’ve got to bend backwards to accommodate to the new situation. Obviously you’re never going to find a perfect moment to apply it to One Piece without a big change in the staff rotation, but even Precure has clean cuts with the yearly fresh starts. Not having many projects going on atm has reduced the damage, but it’s been such a careless move anyway.

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9 months ago

Guest

osama___a

the fact that the people who was harsher in their comments are working in episodes that will air/aired this month, so you can totally feel their concerns

The producers continue not to care about the animators work enviroment and their health, this action doesnt make any sense.

The companies/associations that their mission is to protect animators should start to step up more affirmatively.

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9 months ago

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Steelblake

This strikes me as odd. I mean it sounds like better work conditions but this should be coming with a new schedule that make work this politic. idk how this is going to affect to show already in production but this should be good news for future shows but at the end of the day they should really work on it´s comunication maybe say something like “we hearing suggestions”

It *will* be good for future projects if it’s accompanied by other measures. More generous and better planned allocation of resources, holding back on the number of projects like they’re currently doing, getting those experiments to improve efficiency to the point they can be applied to full length projects… Otherwise, it means “you have less time to make what you were doing”, which isn’t exactly ideal. And if you think that this is weird: the new series for the most popular anime of all time had easily the worst schedule out of any long running TV anime, to the point… Read more »

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9 months ago

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sick

The article doesn’t mention if the deadlines were altered to make up for the lack of over time and mandatory breaks. Was that the case? If so, my take would be radically different than what the author had. Mandatory vacation, mandatory breaks, reduction in forced overtime, telling people they don’t have to be perfect all the time… this is an example of a bad actor in the industry when it comes to labor practices? I always hear Japan has a culture of working yourself to death. Are these really bad work practices at Toei or just them doing something that… Read more »

They absolutely haven’t been (I mean we’re talking about ongoing TV anime, so they couldn’t) which is why as osama mentioned up there, the people who are the most upset are the ones who were due episodes within this month. The effect won’t really be contained to this since there’s ripples anytime schedules are affected, but they got the worst part.

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9 months ago

Guest

LMD3014

I see this as actually very positive in the long term. Sure, the implementation is haphazard, but that will always be true when you’re going against the company/industry culture. Similar things were seen by a friend who worked in engineering, so it’s not just the animation industry problem. In the long term, if the people are forced to work reasonable hours the management of the company will end up having to acquire a more realistic view on what they can or can’t do. It’s either that or they will have to accept bad quality output and unsatisfied workers. Either way,… Read more »

The thing is that by itself, this doesn’t *solve* the problem in any way in the long run. Creators are never going to accept putting out something they feel doesn’t live up to what they can do, so they’ll keep pushing themselves in unreasonable ways – for the record, a bunch of these people were working at the studio during Golden Week, they simply were upset that they had to basically break the rules to do their already stressful job as they had planned. I get your idea that if they’re fed up enough with this, eventually the people managing… Read more »

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9 months ago

Guest

LMD3014

IMO it’s not that Toei’s high-ups aren’t trying to plan: they’re just failing regularly at it. Similarly, Toei’s creators don’t overwork because they love it, they do it because they have to.

If we keep things static the problem will never solve itself, and everyone will keep doing their best (and obtaining decent to terrible results, like a secondary shonen character :). Seeing some movement by all the key actors is at least a positive sign: they know there’s a problem.

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9 months ago

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Luffy

Toei you kooky and greedy because you are one who gave license to 4kids without thinking.
Put one piece cheaper and give license for all the episode to funimation quickly

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9 months ago

Guest

Justo

A very divided comment section in this article, it’s great to read it. For what it’s worth, I also kinda think is a good move from Toei, but obviously I’m not knowledgeable enough on this industry. If creators get upset and stressed about this new policy, it’s because of their unhealthy artistic goals. Yes we’d love to have awesome visuals, but if it comes at the cost of you dying a little more, then please no, save your health first. I mean, you said that Toei expects a dip in quality, and if that’s really true, then its okay, and… Read more »

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9 months ago

Guest

Luffy

toei releasing 1 chapter per episode and if they really want release it that way, why not they put 4 or 5 or 6 month gap between manga and anime instead of a year gap

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7 months ago

Guest

:Bouleup

Do you have any news about what’s going on since this decision ? Is that changed something in their actual/new productions

Not much has changed since then, but that’s not actually surprising. While very specific decisions (like the unannounced “forced” holidays) have an immediate effect, structural changes are much slower to manifest.

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4 months ago

Guest

:Bouleup

You think a good structural change can be hoped for the futur ? Still with these methods or not

Can’t help but be curious about which Arte documentary the screenshot in the middle of your (very interesting btw) article is from. I’m guessing it’s likely a Takahata-themed one, but if you have the title of the documentary that’d be nice.